ASUS Maximus V Extreme Review

Introduction and Technical Specifications

The Maximus range from ASUS has been around for a long while. Indeed the Maximus II came with Socket 775. It says a lot about the relative speed with which Intel have gone from the 870 to the 3770K that we've swiftly arrived at the Maximus V. Today we're taking a look at two variants of the Maximus V, and we'll begin with the full-fat, all singing and dancing monster that is the ASUS Z77 Maximus V Extreme.

Whereas the Rampage IV Extreme was a cut above the Maximus IV when it came to features, there is no such divide any more. The Maximus V Extreme is stuffed with so many cutting edge technologies and all the latest bells and whistles, that if you've even a passing desire to futureproof yourself as much as is realistic, then we think you're covered.

There is a lot to get through, so let's dispense with the preamble and get straight down to business.

Technical Specifications

The first thing that will catch your eye is the inclusion of the Intel Thunderbolt architecture. This has twice the speed of USB 3.0, full duplex, and thanks to some fiendishly clever work from the boffins in the Intel labs, you can daisy chain your devices without losing any bandwidth. Being so new we haven't yet got anything to test it with, but if the market takes it up with the same hunger that USB was adopted, then you're looking at the future.

PCI Express lanes are handled with a combination of the native Z77 chipset, and a PLX chip which helps provide plenty of lanes to keep your GPUs running hard. Beyond that it's everything you'd expect from a Flagship ASUS motherboard. Loads of tweaking capabilities, support for LN2 cooling, all of the Republic of Gamers goodies and bagfulls of connectivity options.

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